From Disrupt Runner-Up To $13 Million In Funding, BillGuard Tells All

BillGuard has come a long way in a short time. The company launched its SaaS product, which automatically scans your credit card statements for unwanted and fraudulent charges, in May of 2011 at Disrupt. Yet, BillGuard has since saved its users nearly $1 million in unwanted or fraudulent charges in just over a year.

I sat down with founder and CEO Yaron Samid to discuss the path from Disrupt to today. Even with a brand new baby, he was full of energy as he remembered launching on stage at Disrupt NY 2011. It was a memorable Disrupt for me too — I had started working for TechCrunch the week before — and I distinctly remember an argument on stage between Samid and Fred Wilson over the BillGuard business model.

Samid warns against this. It’s never becoming for an entrepreneur to argue with a noted VC in public, much less in a competition. But things seemed to work out for the company either way, as BillGuard has raised a total of $13 million in funding.

Samid says that he’s actually grateful to have come in second place, rather than take the crown from GetAround. “It puts a chip on your shoulder,” he told me after the interview. “It makes you work that much harder, because everyone thinks your second best.”